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Message: <blockquote data-quote="maddman75" data-source="post: 3483635" data-attributes="member: 2673">That has to do with the size of the community.  Places like Circvs and Nothingland can get away with mostly hands-off moderation because of their size.  Everyone really knows everyone else, so acting like a huge jerk is going to make the boards in general an unpleasant experience.  Here, if you act like a jerkface in Rules, odds are no one will notice in General or Off Topic.  Too many people.  It works so well the smaller boards even allow politics and religious discussions without the boards going down in flames. But I'm also an active member of two larger boards, this one and SomethingAwful.  ENWorld needs its moderation because when you have this many users it only takes a couple of trolls to turn the whole apple-cart over.  And even if you assume that 99% of users are fine upstanding citizens, there's 2218 people online right now.  That would mean there are 22 jerks on, just looking to pick a fight or troll a thread.  Something Awful is even larger and more tightly moderated, and is one of the best general forums on the internet.There's sort of an inverse quality to unmoderated discussions, where the quality of the conversation is inversely proportional to the size of the community.  If can work well in small communities where everyone knows each other, but if it gets too big it just turns into usenet.</blockquote>